A buffoon

[W]e attended a recent PhD confirmation at the Queensland University of Technology, where we teach. Candidate Michael Noonan’s thesis title was Laughing at the Disabled: Creating comedy that Confronts, Offends and Entertains….Noonan went on to affirm that his thesis was guided by post-structuralist theory…He then showed video clips in which he had set up scenarios placing the intellectually disabled subjects in situations they did not devise and in which they could appear only as inept. Thus, the disabled Craig and William were sent to a pub out west to ask the locals about the mystery of the min-min lights. In the tradition of reality television, the locals were not informed that Craig and William were disabled. But the candidate assured us some did “get it”, it being the joke that these two men could not possibly understand the content of the interviews they were conducting. This, the candidate seemed to think, was incredibly funny. Presumably he also thought it was amusing to give them an oversized and comically shaped pencil that made it difficult for them to write down answers to the questions they were meant to ask.

So vulgar cruelty is dressed up as poststructuralism now? I didn’t know that.

It is not our intention here to demolish the work of Noonan, an aspiring young academic and filmmaker. After all, ultimate responsibility for this research rests with the candidate’s supervisory team, which included associate professor Alan McKee, the faculty ethics committee, which apparently gave his project total approval, and the expert panel, which confirmed his candidacy…Lest the reader think we exaggerate, let us turn to the views of McKee, the enfant terrible of the post-structuralist radical philistines within the creative industries faculty at QUT. In the university newspaper, Inside QUT, he was reported as saying: “Teaching school students that Shakespeare is more worthy than reality television is actively evil” (italics added) and in his “ideal world programs such as Big Brother would be at the centre of thecurriculum”.

I’m trying to encourage people to break out of their normal habits, to think about the culture they consume. I’m thinking that maybe we shouldn’t just do the same thing, every day week in, week out. So I’m going to start ‘Put down a book week’.

Ha ha ha – like turn off the tv week, only different; geddit? Is that funny or what.

‘TV Turn off week’ is gaining media attention around the world. Under a rhetoric of encouraging people to try something different, it focuses on one particular part of culture and tells them that they should give it up. But why only television, and not books?

Because tv makes you stupid in a way that books don’t, because reading is more active than watching tv is; that’s why we prefer to watch tv rather than read when we’re exhausted; duh. You know that, but you’re pretending you don’t, you pretentious git.

TV is popular culture. It is particularly popular with large working class audiences. And it is consistently attacked more than other media. Maybe I’m just paranoid, but I’m guessing that there’s a connection there. There’s no harm in asking people to think about the culture they consume – but how come it’s only the consumers of popular mass culture who have to do it? Why not force some emeritus Professors to watch Channel Ten for a week? It would shake up their habits just as much as turning off tv would for some other citizens.

Who have to do it? They don’t have to do it, you ridiculous pseud; the campaign is voluntary. And that’s why not force some emeritus Professors to watch Channel Ten for a week; because nobody is being forced to turn the tv off.

That’s the guy who approved his student’s reality video that makes fun of a couple of guys with intellectual disabilities. Impressive.

44 Responses to “A buffoon”

“Oh no, even better. How about this – let’s start ‘Turn off radio week’.

You can switch off this radio program, which you’re probably only listening to out of habit anyway, and go and try something more interesting instead. Like watching television.

I’d like top propose that Turn Off Radio Week begins today. In fact, it starts, just about … now.”

You would have to agree: watching TV WOULD be more interesting than listening to this!

…on the other hand, his comments are not entirely loopy:

“Television is bad for people, you could argue. Well, yes, physically, watching TV is sedentary. Just like reading a book. Too much TV and not enough exercise makes you fat. Just like reading too many books.”

There IS a profound cultural division about the way in which various sedentary activities are viewed: reading is good, TV and video games are bad. But when I was young (long ago), and video games didn’t exist and TV was limited, I was always being told to stop reading and go outside and play…

Aren’t we engaging in a category error assuming that these “special” youths are engaged with the same western cosmopolitan “enlightened” narrative that we enjoy? Their reality is ostensibly radically different, and one can assume that their narrative is one of challenging the intellecto-elite. Challenging, and even humoring those that assume a superior comico-objectivity is very possibly a liberating experience for them. And who wouldn’t want to experience the challenge of unusually shaped everyday objects?

There may be a serious point in all this- that humour can be found anywhere and (maybe) that we shouldn’t be so sensitive. This could be applied to the Mohammed cartoons for example. One of the points made was that many muslims were simply being oversensitive.

However, while one can say this in the abstract, how this project was done was appalling. It involved deliberate bullying and humiliation of the subjects by the film- maker. This alone should have put it in front of an ethics committee. The fact that many of the faculty found this bullying amusing says a lot about their lack of basic human compassion.

Muslims were perfectly capable of defending themselves against the cartoons, whether by rational debate, ignoring them, laughing or (as actually happened) using violence and demanding censorship. Craig and William could do none of these things.

I bet that Noonan wouldn’t have laughed at Islam in the same way- too risky for a post-modernist!

I hoped you would enjoy my semi-humorous name, but I’m being as serious as I know how to be when it comes to my faith, which I came by the hard way — by being born in Baghdad and having to contend with those damned Shia infidels.

I hoped you would enjoy my semi-humorous name, but I’m being as serious as I know how to be when it comes to my faith, which I came by the hard way — by being born in Baghdad and having to contend with those damned Shia infidels.

“Idiot” once referred to the profoundly mentally challenged. If it’s OK to insult “pomo idiot[s],” than why not the genuine article? Perhaps be that I disarticulated myself, being that English is not my language of home, but hurling insults will not make your case. You prefer I write in Ukrainskiy?

We see that the Greek unskilled person became a French stupid person. The moral is that what words once meant is irrelevant to what they mean now. So it’s not ok to insult the “mentally challenged” even when it is ok to assail those who are stupid by choice

I have always understood that the term ‘idiot’ meant one who took no part in public life – anathema to the Greeks – and who was concerned only with himself (women not being expected to participate).

This could be seen as analogous with Autism, which can be very broadly said to involve the inability to engage with those around you.

So if the French took the ‘unskilled, ignorant’ aspect of the term and applied it to low intelligence (I believe it was the term used for the lowest category of intelligence in the old ‘idiot – imbecile – moron’ classification) then that’s an interesting journey. When I can summon the energy I’ll drag my Compact OED off the shelf and browse a while.

In my neck of the woods the word ‘ignorant’ is colloquially used to mean lack of social skills/basic courtesy. One who pushes into a queue or otherwise lowers the quality of life for their fellow humans is said to be ‘ignorant’ regardless of their educational achievements. Is that the case elsewhere?

Back to the point, the best word I can think of to describe these characters is one which OB has indicated she is uncomfortable with.

Hi, Pyotr. You seem like fun. Mind you, some people who show up and seem like fun turn out to be really wierd on closer examination. I’m sure that’s not so in your case.

I’m usually a fun guy. I certainly was last night when, between glasses of vodka, I typed that PoMo nonsense. I was laughing so much, I nearly wet myself (with vodka). Last night it was hilarious, today just comical.

How anyone could have taken it seriously, I don’t know. You folks are mostly quite brilliant — maybe too much for your own good. As we say back in Kiev, “Lighten up!”

What I want to know is, who’s this Anti-occident person? Can’t be genuine. At least I hope not.

While I don’t want to appear to be the hyper-protective parent of a disabled child, there is something disturbingly sadistic in all this. My son, Brendan, is afflicted with Asperger’s Syndrome and would probably react similarly to William. Don’t get me wrong, the miscues and malapropisms Brendan commits can be funny. In fact, some of them have worked their way into the McClelland family jargon. This serves partly to show our affection but also to help inure him to the cruelty he encounters outside the home.

The fact that humans are cruel is hardly news, but collecting a PhD for it illustrates a new low. For the many academics that are puzzled or dismayed at the rising anti-intellectualism in our society, they need look no further than this incident. It somewhat diminishes the value of a doctorate, I would think. As for the PoMo crowd, the Irish have a charmingly descriptive phrase: “a shower of feckin’ gobshites”.

But television isn’t necessarily bad (documentaries, intelligent current affairs/discussion shows, etc.), and many (probably most) books are bad. So maybe there is a valid point in there.

Why just assume that just because something is written in book form it must be good? Look at the bestsellers lists sometime (hey, I just did and good old Kevin Trudeau is at no. 3 with ‘The Weight Loss Cure “They” Don’t Want You To Know About’, behind ‘The Secret’ at no.1. I rest my case.).

Barney, fair comments. There was a fabulous documentary about tourettes a couple of months ago on Channel 4 (UK) which enabled the viewer to getter better understanding of the condition, but also allowed you to laugh like f@ck when the kids being filmed did their thing. They themselves could see the funny side but were allowed to discuss the seriously restrictions it occasionally placed on their personal life. Not cruel. Educational. Good telly. A billion miiles away from what this berk’s been up to.

“Only Allah knows what makes people stupid”. Well shouldn’t he do something ??

Allah is doing His best. I give him full marks. In my country, we have the light burden/heavy burden theme. If Allah gives you a temporary light burden on Earth, and you don’t carry it properly, then He gives you a permanent heavy burden in Heaven (or wherever it is you go). Conversely, if He gives you a heavy burden here, and you carry it properly, then you get rewarded with an eternal light burden in Heaven. This is sometimes referred to as the “No complaining” rule.

I assume you are referring to those people who shout such things as “Behead the blasphemers.” It’s different when one is defending the faith. What makes society work properly in the eyes of Allah is Islam, so it must be defended against all challenges. (Personally, I oppose decapitation, but it’s handy rhetoric.)

The “No complaining” rule pertains solely to one’s personal plight. You British have a version of this, no? “Stiff upper lip.” Of course this is a bit of the No True Scotsman fallacy, but no true Muslim prioritizes his/her personal problems, rather s/he submits to the will of Allah. It’s just that you can’t have infidels attacking the One True Faith or the final Prophet (PBUH).

“”Only Allah knows what makes people stupid”. Well shouldn’t he do something ??”

He created religion…

Some time later He created whoever has Pyotr and Anti-O as their sock puppets. I don’t feel the two events are of remotely similar magnitude, but in both cases He was obviously having a bit of a laugh.

Why am I being referred to in the same typing breath as Anti-occident, who is obviously some sort of brainwashed fool, or perhaps a troll? Frankly, I’m guessing the latter.

I was raised in Ukraine as a dialectical materialist, and I still accept materialism as the only reasonable method of interpreting reality. (Not so sure about dialectics.) One cannot conceivably be more atheistic than I am.

PS. In case you were reading while drunk, I wrote that PoMo crap while enjoying a drunken laff riot with my wife the other evening.

OK, I confess. I am no Muslim. Basically, I can’t stand religious people, and shun them like the plague. The other night, I thought of the PoMo(hammad) joke and thought I’d present the idea that fundamentalist types probably think that relativism is another evidence of the decadence of the West. Now that I’ve been outed, I shall desist. You have to admit, it’s kinda funny. PoMo(hammad) as bringing down the West? Anti-occident? Gotta laugh, no?

However, there’s no reason to drag Pyotr Modenko into my charade. He seems like a nice chap.

OB writes: “So naturally I googled this Alan McKee genius”. Well, I did the same thing, because much of the credibility of the postgrad student’s film about the two intellectually disabled men would have rest on the credibility of his supervisor, Alan McKee.

Interestingly, a google of McKee will turn up heaps of information on the guy, right from the time he arrived in Australia from Britain to take up a postion in Perth, to the present day. He then took up a postion at the University of Queensland in Brisbane as a lecturer, and has become an Assoc Prof in the Creative Industries Faculty (CIF) at the Queensland University of Queensland (an meteoric rise from 2002 to 2006, seemingly because at QUT he was under the partonage of the the Dean of the CIF Prof John Hartley (Hartley, also British, was also a Perth academic and McKee worked for him there).

But McKee has published material along the way that would have enabled him to get ticks in the boxes at his promotion review panel.

McKee is the archetypal postmodernist using cultural studies in order to produce work that’s highly subjective, but typical of his line of postmodernism.

Many of the google hits on his name rests on his work on pornography: in particular, he argues the benefits of using pornography, and in many instances, uses his own use of gay pornography as evidence of its benefits.

I’d hasten to add that his gayness is not, and should not, be an issue here. Rather, his postmodernist research interests and research methodologies (often with a gay theme, but certainly not always) *are* of issue.

It’s very clear that McKee actively courts controversy, and uses it to advance his own career in academe.

Here’s a quick summary of some of the info I’ve found on Assoc Prof Alan McKee:

http://www.scmp.mq.edu.au/futuresex/abstracts.html In FUTURESEX: Alan McKee: “How to Show Men Not-Kissing on Television”: This illustrated lecture will provide an annotated genealogy of the ways in which men are shown not-kissing other men in popular television series. The desirable end point is an ‘ordinary’ representation of homosexuality that is not necessarily ‘normal’, but so familiar as to seem unremarkable. Notable points in the journey include Dynasty, Melrose Place, Star Trek: TNG, the gay porn videos Rush and Romeo and Julian, and, finally, Will and Grace.

http://apq.anu.edu.au/archive/abstracts2.html Alan McKee: Constructing the ‘Australian man’ in gay video porn: Kangaroos, koalas and emus may be instantly recognisable symbols of Australia, but do they remain so when viewed by two topless young men in a four-wheel drive, as a prelude to homosexual congress? The Sydney Opera House symbolises a cultural affectation that has been important for overcoming Australian cultural cringe, but how is opera articulated to homosexuality when it is merely a backdrop for cocksucking? How Australian can gay sex be?

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2372/is_4_42/ai_n15929172/pg_6 Kinds of sex acts causing orgasms: As a further extension of the concept of penis worship, I developed another measure to take account of possible phallocentrism in pornography. … I was aware of the generic expectation that the porn viewer will be able to see the orgasm. This means that men will often withdraw in order to ejaculate, sometimes masturbating themselves while they do so. I specified that the coders not to code this as masturbation if it occurred for five seconds or less.

http://www.rabble.ca/babble/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic&f=24&t=000907 Now, as soon as I heard about McKee’s study, I knew it was nonsense. No objectification and degradation in popular porn? Yeah right; popular porn is full of this stuff!… I guess he is trying to protect porn from the censorship lobby. However, by denying the obvious – that abusive porn exists in the mainstream, and that it sells – and then disproving his own denial, he only shoots himself in the foot.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21298334-421,00.html Be adult, porn industry pleads [February 28, 2007 01:00am]: The pornographic film industry will tomorrow begin a creative Federal Court action to have adult films that depict actual sex between consenting adults stripped of their X-rating. The pornographic film industry will tomorrow begin a creative Federal Court action to have adult films that depict actual sex between consenting adults stripped of their X-rating. … AdultShop.com will … call on Alan McKee from the Queensland University of Technology to argue consumers of sexually explicit materials in Australia can fairly be described as reasonable adults. “A film involving various forms of actual sexual activity, including close-ups, but with no violence would be unlikely to cause offence,” he argues.

at Cardiff they still remember mkee’s mentor, John Hartley, with not very much affection. One thing Hartley kept on saying is that academics had to build their careers on the basis of turning themselves into brand names. Seems Hartley’s little follower, McKee, is doing just that.

Why is it that for so many academic pomos like Mckee and Hartley — who claim to be so hip with their relativism — that when their p.o.v’s getting attacked, they go crying to some regulator in their institution to apply some rule or other to silence their critics? not very pomo of them, and bet you a month’s wages that mckee will do that against his critics.

hmmm … i do sound more than a bit peeved about this. oops. sorry. Shouldn’t become too obsessive about all this.